today, we had rain

Years ago, I read an essay by Anna Quindlen, where the author’s daughters headed into the woods for an explore and Quindlen casually mentioned that her own place was on the porch, watching her children follow their wanderlust.

Though I liked the essay, I disagreed with Quindlen about sitting on the porch, even to write. If there is exploring to be done, I, as a general rule, like to be in the middle of it. My daughter was four (or so) at the time, and we had already done a good deal of forest work together — building fairy houses, examining toadstools, pretending to get lost among the trees and refusing to find our way out again.

In some ways, I couldn’t imagine doing those things without my child — or her without me.

She is 14 now, this wonder girl. Today, when a light sprinkle began, she collapsed her weary body onto the grass and faced the sky. I, tucked into a deck chair, knees folded to my chest, smiled for a moment and prepared to join her.

All at once the seam in the sky split and the firmament loosened its flood onto her face, her t-shirt, her bare feet.

She laughed.

Even the rain has nothing on that laugh.

It was at that moment — the moment I hesitated — when I understood what Quindlen had been talking about. This girl didn’t need a playmate. She needed rain. And lots of it.

She moved through it. Drank it. Swam through rushing rivers of it in the gutters.

Screen doors slammed and other girls came dashing into the deluge. The dads across the street, bare chested and tattooed, beer cans in their hands this Sunday afternoon, sauntered down the street side by side, supervising and ignoring their kids at the same time … the way only fathers can do.

Today there was mud and flooded streets and long tangled hair flecked with leaves and seeds from the air.

I stood under the awning, hugging myself. Soon the dad next door launched his three-year-old into the storm and stood next to me, both of us dry. We talked about politics and forgiveness and what it means to raise girls.

And as we settled into the quiet, I thought, for the first time in a long time, of my mother.

I was 18 years old and leaving home. It was June. Raining. I went outside and made ‘rain angels’ in the middle of the flooded street.

She stood inside and smiled at me from behind the screen door.

I loved her. I would miss her. But I didn’t need her at that moment.

I needed to believe that I had invented this — rain angels, abandon, delight.

I needed to explore, alone and with friends, the outer reaches of joy and love and heartbreak.